Last Monday’s shooting spree by a Virginia Tech student was a tragedy that deeply affected the nation, and resulted in the largest surge in visits to News and Media websites since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Hitwise News and Media category accounted for 3.83% of all US online visits for the week ending April 21, 2007, an increase of 11% from the previous week (ending April 14, 2007). As is typical with major news events, visits to Broadcast Media sites surged more sharply than visits to Print category websites: the market share of US visits to the Broadcast Media category increased by 28% for the week ending April 21, 2007 versus the previous week, while visits to Print category websites were up only 11%.
On a daily traffic basis, visits to MSNBC and CNN.com were up by 102% and 75% respectively on Monday April 16, 2007 versus the previous Monday. Andy Plesser at Beet.TV reported that CNN experienced a record breaking 11.4 million video views on that day. Hitwise Clickstream data confirm that there was a huge surge in CNN’s downstream traffic to its video site, with more than one in five visits (22%) to CNN going to its video service on that day.

Next week Hitwise will be releasing a US News & Media Report, which examines the increasing interaction between News and Media sites and video sites, as well as looks at overall News and Media Industry trends, sources of news traffic, and fast-growing websites. I will also post highlights from the report here on the blog.